As an electrician, he oversaw large projects in his hometown of Philadelphia.

After retiring to Florida, he served for 19 years as president of his community’s condo board and as its volunteer general contractor.

But Austin spent the last six months of his life immobile, left lying for hours in a communal room of dementia patients at the Largo Health and Rehabilitation Center, a Consulate Health Care nursing home near St. Petersburg, his wife, Matina Austin, said.

“That was the beginning of the end,” Matina Austin said of her husband’s stay at Largo Health and Rehab, one of the worst-performing nursing homes in Florida.

Dick Austin with his son while at Largo Health and Rehabilitation Center in Pinellas County on June 20, 2015. (Photo: Provided by Matina Austin)

“They just put him on a cot every morning, first thing, rolled him into a room,” she said. “All the patients with dementia, and they just laid there for the whole day.”

The Florida Agency for Health Care Administration targeted Largo Health and Rehabilitation last year for problems dating back to 2015 through at least eight inspections that included numerous patient falls, abuse and improperly dispensing medication. The federal government shut off Medicare payments to the home.

Dick Austin was 66 when he and his wife retired to Florida to manage their beachfront condo. His wife said he put his heart and soul into running the small business.

He was 83 when he fell in the garage and broke his leg. He spent some time at a nursing home in Clearwater, but by the time he left he was showing early signs of dementia, Matina Austin said.

He was back to his Indian Shores home for a while, but soon needed full-time nursing care. He spent time at several nursing homes as his wife struggled to find the good care she thought he deserved.

Matina Austin poses for a portrait at her home in Seminole, Fla., on Friday, May 4, 2018. Austin's husband, Dick, ended up at Largo Health and Rehabilitation Center in Pinellas County in June 2015, near the end of a two-year struggle with dementia.(Photo: Nicole Raucheisen/Naples Daily News)

Largo Health and Rehabilitation was Dick Austin’s last home.

There weren’t enough nurses or aides, and the good ones never stuck around long, Matina Austin said. He was mostly left alone.

“They never talked to him. They never did anything,” she said.

Dick Austin died about 5 p.m. on Dec. 22, 2015. He was 85.

Matina Austin said the nursing home didn’t notify her about his death for about two hours. By the time she arrived, rigor mortis had set in, she said. His knees were up and his body contorted.

“I’ll never get over it,” Matina Austin said. “To see your husband like that after 41 years, it’s horrible.”